The Art of Ninja - The Ninja Blade/Ninjitsu Stalker
Introduction
Greetings. I am Angry_Citizen. Henceforth, Ninja Blade will be referred to in this guide as Katana. It is not a Ninja Blade. It is a Katana with a darker hilt.
Having leveled a Katana/Ninjitsu Stalker to level 50, I feel that I know quite a good deal about these two power sets, both in Player Versus Environment play (also known as PvE, for short), and in Player Versus Player combat (shortened to PvP, as you can guess), as I have played in both for about 8 months now. As such, since the Katana set is often maligned by those who have yet to play it (or have yet to feel the curious sensation of a Katana being carefully inserted into his or her backside), I have decided to construct a guide for the newly minted stabber, the experienced stabber, and those who have yet to stab, as well as for those who are new to the Stalker AT. The guide shall encompass not only Katana and Ninjitsu, but will also give comments on various combinations involving those two sets, as well as general Stalker information. Let us proceed, shall we?
Katana: The Use of the Blade
You wish to become Ninja then? Do you not wish to have bananas protruding from your body anymore? Tired of the Pink Pom Poms of Doom you see everywhere? Sick of seeing the inside of the hospital? Do not worry. I shall show you how to become Ninja. You must first learn the arts of the Katana, however. Be patient - this weapon takes time to master.
The Katana is a powerful weapon. It is often maligned by those who wear fuzzy pink pom poms in order to kill things, or those who believe themselves 'uber' for having a ranged attack. You need no ranged attack. You shall soon be a master of the shadows, and of a powerful and deadly blade. You belong in the fray, stabbing things at will. You belong where a Ninja is meant to be - up close and personal, staring into your enemy's eyes while you shove a 3 foot piece of steel through them.
Here is an overview of the Katana:
Gambler's Cut: Level 1.
Damage: 2.3 BI (please see bottom for overview on BI, short for Brawl Index).
Secondary Effect: A 5% defense debuff on the target.
Endurance Cost: Extremely low.
Recharge: 4 seconds.
Slotting: 3 damage, 2 accuracy
Animation: Quick. Extremely quick. Essentially, you whip out your Katana and cut two times across your opponent's gut.
Comments: This is a decent attack. It used to be far better, however. Back in The Day *lights pipe, reminisces*, this attack would give a 'double critical' if executed while in the Hidden state, meaning in one blow it would do not just double damage like a normal critical, but triple damage to your unfortunate foe. It was a beautiful bug, but it was overpowered, and thus it needed be nixed for the sake of Balance. Now-o'-days, Gambler's Cut is simply not for you. You are a Stalker. You kill things, and you kill them fast. This attack does a fairly small amount of damage. There are better attacks out there. If anything, take this power for the early levels and respec it out ASAP.
Sting of the Wasp: Level 1.
Damage: 3.2 BI.
Secondary Effect: A 5% defense debuff on the target.
Endurance Cost: Low.
Recharge: 6 seconds.
Animation: A little slower than Gambler's Cut. You cut diagonally from the left to the right. Essentially a shoulder cut.
Slotting: 3 damage, 2 accuracy.
Comments: This is a better attack than Gambler's Cut. Fast animation, decent damage, decent recharge. Use it more as a filler attack, especially in the later levels when you have bigger and badder attacks to murder things with. It's certainly a decent attack, but I highly suggest not using it as the only attack you'll have, since Katana does not get any truly gruesome attacks until level 26, with Soaring Dragon. In the early game, you'll be looking at your Power window, staring at Soaring Dragon with a mixture of hope and sadness as you slowly count down the levels.
Flashing Steel: Level 2.
Damage: 2.7 BI.
Secondary Effect: A 5% defense debuff on the target.
Endurance Cost: Low.
Recharge: 6 seconds.
Animation: About the same length as Sting of the Wasp. You appear to do a lazy sort of flick from right to left across your foe's gut.
Slotting: 3 damage, 2 accuracy.
Comments: This is a cone attack. If it was like most other sets, this would be a powerful single target attack that would actually be useful to a Ninja. However, for our purposes, let's just say this attack is... lacking. It's a decent cone width (90 degrees), certainly, but it's damage isn't much. It rarely crits when used from Hide, unlike other, single target powers. Let's say no more on this power.
Assassin's Blade: Level 6.
Damage: 19.4 BI, if executed from Hide.
Secondary Effect: Toggle Drop on the target (PvP only. See notes at bottom for overview on toggle dropping).
Endurance Cost: Large - be wary of being interrupted multiple times, or you will find yourself quite out of breath.
Recharge: 15 seconds.
Animation: This takes approximately 3 seconds to execute. You whip out your Katana, crouch down low while you aim, holding the blade in your left hand. Your right hand is poised at the bottom of the hilt. When it executes, your right hand pushes the blade into your squirming foe. You hold the blade inside him for a very small amount of time, then withdraw it. Your blade ends up at a sharp angle, pointed downwards, while both of your hands have the hilt held chest high. It is perhaps the best animation in the game. I giggle inside each time I use that power.
Slotting: 3 damage, 2 accuracy, 1 recharge.
Comments: This is your Assassin's Strike power, known as 'AS' for short. It takes skill to use since it is interruptable for a good portion of the animation time. Currently, the only thing that interrupts Assassin's Strike is movement and damage, since I7 fixed the problem of someone sneezing on you and interrupting your careful, expert assassination. Get used to this awesome power, as you will be using it your entire Ninja career. This is what you use when you want something very dead, very quickly. It certainly does quite a good job at making your target writhe in pain and die a horrible death.
Build Up: Level 8.
Damage: N/A.
Secondary Effect: Boosts Damage and Tohit(accuracy, only better) for ten seconds.
Endurance Cost: Low.
Recharge: 90 seconds.
Animation: You glow red, and whip out your Katana.
Slotting: 3 recharge, as many tohit buffs as you can spare.
Comments: This power boosts your -base- damage by 80% for ten seconds (meaning it only multiplies the base BI, and not the damage you get after enhancements are factored in), and boosts your Tohit count by 20% for the same ten seconds. This is an extremely useful skill. You use this to add to your damage in most cases, but against higher level foes and against defense builds in PvP, you use this to actually hit the enemy. "A miss is a waste of endurance", after all.
Placate: Level 12.
Damage: N/A.
Secondary Effect[/i]: Makes a single foe stop attacking you (forever, unless you do something that would normally aggro an unaggro'd critter, such as using your Katana to perform an involuntary appendectomy on one of the critter's buddies), and puts you into a Hidden state for a 10 second period of time. In PvP, it makes your foe unable to select you for a short time, as well as providing the 'artificial' Hidden state. The effect cancels (in a PvP environment) when you land a successful hit (meaning you actually connected) or when the 6 second Placate expires. Yes, it is shorter in PvP.
Endurance Cost: Free!
Recharge: 60 seconds.
Animation: For those of you who have seen the old Star Wars, I do hope this quote rings a bell - "These are not the droids you are looking for." If you have never seen Star Wars, you slowly wave your hand at your enemy. Whenever I use this power, I think, "This is not the Ninja you are looking for." What? I'm not a Star Wars fan. Honest.
Slotting: 3 recharge.
Comments: This power is a dream come true. It makes a single targetted enemy forget about you for a little bit, while at the same time putting you into a Hidden state. Now think about this for a moment - your enemy forgets you have just murdered his comrade or attempted to commit that particular crime on your Placated foe itself, and stops attacking. You are invisible again. You are angry, hurt, or otherwise rather mad at the individual, and are in a perfect position to finish filletting him or her. This is your opportunity to Stab the individual again, or deliver a critical, or run your little rear off in a desperate attempt to flee the enemy. It is utterly unresistable by everything in PvE, but some entities in PvP are somehow capable of resisting this effect, either through Assault in the Leadership pool which grants resistance to the effect, or through a rampant bug that is currently infecting the servers, allowing you to be retargettable even after you Placate the fool. Quite a power though, huh?
Divine Avalanche: Level 18.
Damage: 2.3 BI.
Secondary Effect: Places a 15% defense against Lethal damage and Melee attacks onto you.
Endurance Cost: Low.
Recharge: 4 seconds.
Animation: You tilt your Katana horizontally to ward off a blow, and then slap your Katana onto your enemy's head.
Slotting: 3 defense buffs, 2 accuracy.
Comments: I cannot begin to tell you the uses of this power. It places a 10 second buff on you that pretty much makes lethal damage and melee attacks just bounce off you - they can't hit. Which means that when you first receive this power you can easily stack it to grant a total of 30% defense to the specified damage type and position type. That's a lot of defense right out of the bag. It's an amazing skill. This is what makes Katana viable in the Stalker sets.
Soaring Dragon: Level 26.
Damage: 5.0 BI.
Secondary Effect: 75% chance for knockup, 5% defense debuff on the target.
Endurance Cost: Medium.
Recharge: 9 seconds.
Animation: You twirl around, and slice your enemy in an upward arc.
Slotting: 3 damage, 2 accuracy, 1 recharge.
Comments: You finally get your Ninja Cut! Yup. NOW you finally begin to come into your own as a Ninja. You now have a decent follow up attack to your Assassin's Blade, and woe to the fool who gets caught by it. This is salvation at last. This is (partly) what you've struggled towards, hoped for, prayed for, begged for, and trudged through endless missions for. This is the time when you start to use Placate more as a way of delivering criticals than as a self-defense tool or a way to get in an Assassin's Blade. Love it, enjoy it, pay homage to it, hug it, do whatever you need to in order to give this power the proper respect. It's that good.
Golden Dragonfly: Level 32.
Damage: 6.3 BI.
Secondary Effect: 60% chance for knockdown, 5% defense debuff on the target.
Endurance Cost: Bit higher than Medium, but still not quite high enough for High.
Recharge: 12 seconds.
Animation: You jump up and slam your Katana on to your poor foe's head, emitting a distinct red laser-like glow. Best when used while jumping.
Slotting: 3 damage, 2 accuracy, 1 recharge - see the pattern?
Comments: Golden Dragonfly, how I love thee. This power is actually a short cone attack with a 10 degree cone. It has a 50% chance to critical each foe it hits when you're Hidden, and a 15% chance when you're not Hidden. It does monsterous damage. Especially when it crits. Practice lining up the cone aspect, and see how many things you can one shot with the critical. After slotting this power, I didn't use Assassin's Blade nearly as often as I did pre-33. If you thought Soaring Dragon was Godly, Golden Dragonfly will make you very happy indeed. This is the strongest non-AS attack the Ninja has at his disposal. Get used to using it.
Ninjitsu: The Arts of Concealment
You have now mastered the Blade of the Ninja, a Katana. Now you must learn how to survive the pain your enemies will inevitably deal out towards you in their vain quest for life. Ninjitsu is a collection of techniques used in espionage and concealment, or in your case a collection of techniques involving being completely invisible and avoiding attacks that would otherwise turn you into a stealthy Ninja Grease Spot.
Hide: Level 1.
Defense: 2.5% to all types. When Hidden, this is boosted to 37.5% defense to AreaofEffect attacks ONLY.
Secondary Effects: Turns you invisible, and places you in a state of Hidden.
Endurance Cost: Low.
Recharge: 20 seconds.
Animation: Standard Stealth animation, you scrunch inwards and become transparent.
Slotting: I went with one endurance reduction. You may find you want extra AoE defense, so slot it how you wish.
Comments: This is a big part of you - this allows you to become invisible. Not just waiting in the shadows for pseudo-invisibility. No, this is true invisibility, meaning you can wave your hand in front of your enemy's face and they'll never know you're there. Be aware, however, that though this is your main ability and the reason you became a Ninja, it is NOT the only tool at your disposal. Note also that, after you attack, you must wait 10 seconds for Hide's effects to return. You will still be seen after you are rehidden due to a strange extrasensory perception that your PvE enemies will always have so long as they are continuing to chase you, but you will be able to deliver critical hits and Assassin's Strikes, so long as they don't land a hit and interrupt your Hidden state.
Ninja Reflexes: Level 2.
Defense: 13.8% defense to Melee attacks.
Secondary Effects: Boosts your resistance to defense debuffs by a small amount.
Endurance Cost: Medium.
Recharge: 5 seconds.
Animation: I don't like it because it doesn't show what I want, but it's essentially your character pulling his right arm outwards.
Slotting: 3 defense, 1 endurance reduction is best.
Comments: This is another important aspect of the Ninja. As stated, you belong in the fray, stabbing who you wish. This is how you survive that particularly dangerous lifestyle. Your defense is boosted against those who wish to assault you with melee weaponry, such as knives, sledgehammers, fists, katanas, things of a hand-to-hand combat nature. Since you play in melee, you need to have defense to melee weaponry, correct?
Danger Sense: Level 4.
Defense: 13.8% defense to Area of Effect and Ranged attacks.
Secondary Effects: Endows you with the ability to see just about everything, and helps resist defense debuffs.
Endurance Cost: Medium.
Recharge: 5 seconds.
Animation: Another one I don't like since it's not Kuji-In related, but oh well; your character looks around, and continues looking around until you move.
Slotting: 3 defense, 1 endurance reduction.
Comments: Another aspect of Ninjahood. This is your defense to anything that is thrown, launched, fired, exploded, generally anything that can affect more than one entity or travels through the air. It's important because you cannot be next to everything at once, and thus, things will inevitably be thrown at you, launched towards you, fired at you, or exploded on you. It's important to be evasive to these things, or your enemies will use this to their advantage, and kill you.
Caltrops: Level 10.
Damage: Approximately 6 BI's of damage, occuring over a very very long period of time, and thus not very worthwhile.
Secondary Effect: Slows your enemies down fairly significantly.
Endurance Cost: Tiny.
Recharge: 60 seconds (?). Either way, the Caltrops are perma out of the box.
Animation: You toss some spikes on the ground, using your left hand.
Slotting: As many slows as you want.
Comments: Not recommended for the Ninja. This will not unhide you, but anything that steps on the Caltrops instantly knows your exact location. Oddly enough, it messes with an enemy's Artificial Intelligence, causing them to scatter across the Caltrops and not fire at you as much. Decent at blocking doorways, but I found I never needed to block doorways. The damage aspect, though, is utterly worthless. Takes too long to even make a dent in anything.
Kuji-In Rin: Level 16.
Effects: Boosts your psionic resistance by 22.5%, and makes you nigh unmezzable.
Endurance Cost: Very low.
Recharge: 200 seconds.
Animation: You hold your hands up, and push them together. A beam of purplish/pinkish stuff emanates vertically, and your character begins to shimmer with purplish/pinkness.
Slotting: I recommend 3 SO's of recharge. Why? It's perma with 2.. but just barely. Any slow effect placed on you will immediately screw up your perma status protection, and will leave you vulnerable to the sadistic whims of your enemies.
Comments: This is essential to the Ninja. What good is it to be a deadly assassin when your enemies make you your plaything? This power, during it's 2 minute duration, makes enemies practically unable to put you to sleep, immobilize, confuse, hold, disorient, or make you fearful. This is nice because while your more squishy comrades are off holding their heads in agony, or walking around drunk due to a Freak's hammers, or wetting themselves in terror, you are still up and about, stabbing and cutting your way calmly past your foes. The one problem with this power is the lack of Knockback resistance. More on this problem below.
Kuji-In Sha: Level 20.
Effects: Heals you by 25%.
Secondary Effects: Gives you 15% Toxic Resistance.
Recharge: 60 seconds.
Animation: You hold your hands up, and push them together. Several green tendrilly looking things emit from your hands, and you are healed.
Slotting: 3 recharge, 3 heal.
Comments: This is the reason why Ninjitsu is so utterly powerful. Now, initially, a 25% heal every 60 seconds isn't that great, but hey - how does a 49% heal every 31 seconds sound? 'Cause that is what you shall get if you use the above slotting. This power will root you for a brief moment, but nothing to worry about. You'll get used to the power eventually, and will come to love it as I have. After 30 levels of using Kuji-In Sha, I've pretty much gotten the timing on it perfect in order to absorb Alpha Strikes (the initial volley of destruction that comes when you first stab your enemy is called the Alpha Strike) which would normally kill you. Hopefully, you will too.
Smoke Flash: Level 28.
Effects: Placates enemies in an 8' circle around you.
Recharge: 120 seconds
Animation: You hold your hand up, then throw it down quickly, causing a flash of white smoke to appear.
Slotting: As many recharges as you can possibly spare.
Comments: "Oh goodie goodie! An AoE Placate! Now I get to have THREE free criticals!" Uh. No. This power isn't that great. It's on a long recharge timer, and though it has a huge accuracy bonus, it's still not that great. I simply didn't have room for it in my build, and I found I rarely used it when I did have it. Also, to note, this will NOT rehide you, regrettably. If it did.. I'd have much more room for it in my build.
Blinding Powder: Level 35.
Effects: Sleeps, confuses, lowers accuracy.
Recharge: 120 seconds.
Animation: You toss something that looks like dirt at your enemy using your left hand.
Slotting: 2 accs, 2 confuses, 2 recharges.
Comments: Oh goodie! A ranged CONE mez! Yes. THIS is a good power. It won't aggro your poor enemies, but it will cause them to fight one another, fall asleep, and generally bump into each other like drunken idiots while you slaughter them. It's only got a 25' range on it that you can't seem to enhance, but that's ok. A ranged mez on a Stalker, using the least resisted true mez in the game, is just plain gorgeous, and the fact that it's a cone is even better. A funny trick to use in PvP is to find one of those Trip Mine blasters or MM's (you know the type), and toss this stuff on them after they've got a mine field under them. Odds are rather high that it will blow them up instead of you, and you get to walk away with the satisfaction that only comes with using your enemy's tools against him.
Kuji-In Retsu: Level 38.
Effects: Makes you unkillable, pretty much. 45% defense boost to everything. Also greatly boosts your resistance to defense debuffs.
Recharge: 1,000 seconds. Yes. 1,000. Not a typo.
Animation: You appear to pray to God to get you through this stabbing session, emitting a light blue aura at your hands, which extends a foot or two in front of you.
Slotting: 3 recharge, 3 defense buffs.
Comments: GOD MODE! WEEEEEEEE! 38 levels of Ninjahood and you finally attain this power. Activating this makes you able to live through just about everything in the game. Even Aim/Build Up Blasters will have a LOT of difficulty hitting you. You'll be running upwards of 100% defense with this slotted, and your toggles running, not even counting Divine Avalanche usage. You'll also be unable to drain yourself of endurance due to a higher endurance recovery, and you'll be able to run quite a lot faster. Stack this with Speed Boost or something, and you'll be running along at Super Speed speeds, slicing and dicing and stabbing to your black Ninja heart's content with not a care in the world. After the 3 minute Stabathon, however, you are drained of all endurance, and have to wait 20 seconds until you can recover any endurance. Note that this drops toggles, and can get you killed. This is commonly known as the Crash, and you are advised to take Catch a Breath inspirations along for use during this crash.
Power Pools: Generic Tools
Now you must choose from many skills to aid you in your villainous career. These are generic skills shared by others, but they can be useful indeed.
Fitness: Everyone takes Fitness. You should too. Swift/Health/Stamina. Never look back. I tried going Staminaless. It got worse and worse until 34, in which my constant use of Golden Dragonfly was sucking my end bar dry when running Hide/NR/DS. My suggestion is never to attempt it unless you're someone with more patience than I am.
Travel Pools: These consist of Leaping, Speed, Flight, and Teleport. You should pick one of these, or even two of these if you wish to get around quickly. I chose Super Jump. Why? Because it fit with Ninjas, at least in my opinion. I also wanted something fast, with vertical movement, easy to use, low endurance cost, and with few counters. And thus, my love for Super Jump was born. You also get Acrobatics if you want knockdown protection. I'm patient enough that I don't really need it.
All Travel powers will suffice, but some may suit you better. Teleport is -the- get away power. You can escape from almost all situations with it, with but a click of a button. At least, in PvP. In PvE, enemies will be smarter and more capable of knowing where you flew off to. Why? Who knows. It's lame, but guess we have to deal with it. This also comes complete with a foe Teleport and/or a teammate teleport, to do that last bit of damage to a fleeing enemy (former) or to help a team out greatly by allowing Ghosting of missions, which is to say, allowing your team to bypass the majority of the enemy and fight the mission objective (latter).
Super Speed is the least popular travel power nowadays, at least, when used alone. It has no vertical movement to speak of, save for your base jumping height, but it IS -extremely- fast. Give you a stretch of land and only a quick Teleporter can match your speed. Problem is, is when that stretch of land ends. It's also very difficult to use in CoV, because for some reason our Arachnos rescuers have decided that building horribly tall walls with few entrances is a good idea. This comes with a nice power called Hasten which speeds up your attacks significantly. Hasten is useful for EM. Not so useful for Katana.
Flight is an all around good Travel Power - in PvE. In PvP, it's easily countered, and Spines Scrappers will laugh when they stick you with their Flying Banana attack *ahem - Impale*, and watch you fall right out of the sky, ripe for the pickings. In PvP, mobility is king, and Flight just doesn't cut it. If you don't plan on PvP'ing often, this is a very good set to get. It's relatively quick, it has unlimited Z axis mobility, meaning you can get to those annoyingly high Grandville missions that take you to the very tops of the Arachnos Towers. This comes with Hover, a useless power since it's roughly comparable to moving as fast as a glacier. Only not so fast as a glacier. Also has Air Superiority, a VERY decent attack if you can handle the redraw time on your Katana.
Presence: This is two taunts and two Fear powers. The relative lack of Fear protection (which you have in abundance; laugh with me! bahahahahahahaha silly Intimidate users) makes the first of the two Fear powers somewhat useful to a Stalker. Fleeing squishy? Stare at them a moment and for some reason they stop. I didn't take this set, because I disliked it on my Scrapper, before the Control nerfs. I can't even imagine how sucky it is now. Anyway, don't even bother with the AoE Fear. It's only Mag 2, meaning it won't even fear a Lieutenant. If you're getting Presence, get one of the Taunts and grab Intimidate. Slot it to your liking. I suggest at least 2 Accs though, to ensure it hitting.
Concealment: This contains a single target Grant Invis power, a self stealth, a self invis, and a self EEK SHA IS RECHARING AND I JUST WENT INTO THE RED, PHASE SHIFT! power. I have all but the Grant Invis power, since I do not team as often as I probably should. The Stealth? Useful. Very useful. I like it, but it makes me annoyingly slow. The Invis? A Godsend. If you're mobile enough, nothing can harm you while you're Hidden and Invis'd. Why? Because there's a Stealth cap, and you come at or very close to capping Stealth with these two powers alone. There's also a +perception cap. It's not very much larger than the Stealth cap, meaning you'll never be seen beyond, say, 35'. The Phase Shift is another Godsend. Trapped in slows? Phase Shift. Pinned by Telekinesis? Phase Shift. Just stuck a Defender in the midst of a large enemy team? Phase Shift and pray you live. Just made a bad pull on the Lord Recluse Strike Force (LRSF), and now have all of the Surviving 8 looking at you and plotting to pound your face into the Earth? Phase Shift. This power has saved my invisible rear many times, and if you take it, you'll be saved too.
Medicine: This consists of three ally only powers and a self heal. One is a Clear Mind replica, giving a short Status protection buff to the targetted individual. Useful for Squishies who can often save your life - so long as they're not dizzy or lost in their own psyche. One is a short ranged, interruptable ally heal. Don't get this unless you're a badge [censored] and greatly want the healing badges. And then we come to Aid Self, the crown jewel of the set. Why? Because it's only got a tiny interrupt time on it. It heals for a boatload of your hitpoints. It recharges quick. But, has a somewhat high end cost and has a large animation time on it. It's a very decent power for Super Reflexes, but for Ninjitsu, you have a slightly better heal already in your secondary. My suggestion? Skip it and the rest of the set. It's useful for builds with no self heal or a slow recharging self heal, but Kuji-In Sha should serve your needs better.
Fighting: Don't even think about it! There's a bad pair of attacks you can get at the start of the set, followed by Tough which is a resistance to smashing and lethal damage (the two most common types), and then Weave. Weave is worse than a Super Reflex Stalker's Passives, and costs quite a bit of endurance to run. Tough is all right for those with some smashing/lethal resistance already, but for you? Waste of a set. Don't get it.
Leadership: A very common set, for other AT's. Why other AT's? Because most other AT's receive a higher benefit from it. The Stalker AT doesn't get much of a boost. It's generally only used for +perception when used by a Stalker. This is a decent thing for Regens if you want that extra +perception to see some entities, but for Ninjitsu? Unless you plan to spend a lot of time roaming Warburg, you won't need Tactics. Nothing can escape your sight except for a Stalker, so long as you're running Danger Sense. Absolutely nothing.
Set Combo's
This is to show you the various combo's of the Katana and of Ninjitsu, and their inherent strengths and weaknesses when combined with inferior, ahem, I mean, other sets. If you're set on Katana/Ninjitsu, don't read this. Also note that this section won't be as complete as I'd like it to be, but I chalk that up to having not played every primary and secondary to a high level. As such, I will often be speculating, so don't take this as though it's always correct - I expect everyone will chime in and attempt to prove me wrong on some combo of their favourite set(s), so I will attempt to limit my speculation to things widely regarded as The Truth.
Katana Combinations - Katana/Super Reflexes, Katana/Energy Aura, Katana/Dark Armour, Katana/Regen.
Katana/Super Reflexes: In my opinion? Not as good as Katana/Ninjitsu. Why? It's got the limitations of SR. SR pretty much requires you to take every single power in the set in order to even compete with Ninjitsu, which makes your build very tight. You also lack a self heal, which normally means you'd want to invest in the Medicine pool for Aid Self. You -do- get slightly higher defense than Ninjitsu through the passives, but you won't have much room for your primary. Quickness is also nifty, since it's a 20% reduction in recharge and a noticable +speed as well. Very recently, it also got a buff where it would increase Flight speed as well. Divine Avalanche will stack with the melee defense of this set for massive defense numbers.
Katana/Energy Aura: -Still- not as good as Ninjitsu. Why? Same limitations as SR, but, it DOES get a very useful end recovery power. And, arguably, the best God mode power in the game with Overload. Overload turns you into a nigh unkillable machine of destruction, since it's not only a huge +defense power, it's a huge +hp power too. If you go this route, you'll almost certainly want Aid Self. Energy and Lethal Damage will be your specialty in this set, as you have pretty huge amounts of Energy defense, and Divine Avalanche will be used to stack the Lethal defense to Insane levels.
Katana/Dark Armour: This set I don't have a whole lot of experience with. Looking at it from a theoretical standpoint, I can say that this could be very powerful. You get decent resistance to everything, a very powerful self heal that unfortunately siphons off enemies around you and costs a third of your end bar, but the crown jewel of the set is the fact that it gets -enormous- resistance to Psionics and Negative Energy, the least common damage types. With Divine Avalanche, you could stack the decent resistances with powerful defense, and have the potent self heal along as a further back up. Plus, you have two toggle AoE controls, one for Disorient, and one for Fear. They both only affect minions and either cost hit points or a lot of endurance, respectively. They also break Hide, but since Katana is so Scrappy, it's not -as- bad you might expect. And if all this layered defense finally -does- end up failing? You can self rez and stun everything in an AoE, even AV's and PvP'ers in stacked Status Protections. I'll probably eventually roll one of these just to see if it actually could be as immensely powerful in the game as it is on paper.
Katana/Regen: Regen is commonly referred to as The Scrapping Set. I, personally, don't believe it, but that's because I never did like Regen. But, I have to give credit where it's due, Regen is a very powerful set that only gets better with the addition of Defense in Divine Avalanche. You get very decent Regeneration abilities, a click self heal that is almost an exact replica of Kuji-In Sha, another click self heal on a far longer recharge, but heals more and increases the max hit points significantly. Your "God Mode" comes at 28 with Instant Healing. Not much can kill you with Instant Healing and Dull Pain on. You're vulnerable to Burst damage, which is to say anything that deals a lot of damage in a fraction of a second is probably going to send you to the Pearly Gates before your time. You also get a few useless powers, namely Resilience, Revive, and some people say Moment of Glory is useless too. Resilience is further status protection from Disorient with a tiny amount of lethal/smashing resistance too. Revive is just that, Revive. It's pretty much a tier 3 Awaken in a nicely wrapped box, only you get some endurance as well. Moment of Glory essentially puts you at 25% health, gives you huge defense and capped resistance (75%), and ends your ability to Regen and Heal, even from external sources. It's decent, but the lack of ability to heal and regen puts this power at the Meh rating.
Ninjitsu Combinations - Energy/Ninjitsu, Spines/Ninjitsu, Claws/Ninjitsu, Dark/Ninjitsu, MA/Ninjitsu.
Energy/Ninjitsu: The current Flavor of the Month. And it has good reason to be. Powerful burst damage, powerful secondary makes this -the- PvP set to have. It's also decent in PvE, but not as good as people think. Each attack it has (save AS) has a chance to Disorient, except for Total Focus which is guaranteed Disorient. Total Focus' disorient is even powerful enough to make Bosses dizzy. Energy Transfer and Total Focus are the crown jewels of this set, and Bone Smasher to a lesser extent. Energy Transfer and Total Focus take forever to recharge, but do enough damage that they actually can't crit, either entirely or partially, because they would outdamage Assassin's Strike if they did. Total Focus crits for 30% of it's damage, and Energy Transfer actually doesn't crit at all, but if used from Hide, it won't cost you 11% hit points like it normally does. Bone Smasher does roughly half of Total Focus' damage, but recharges about half as long and costs less to fire. Also note that the damage of this set is mostly Energy, not as commonly resisted as, say, Lethal or Smashing damage. All in all, a very good alternative for Katana.
Spines/Ninjitsu: There's only one good thing to say about this set: It -does- get Assassin's Strike. Ahem. Yes, I have a lot of hatred for this set. It's the 'other' Flavor of the Month. Why, I have no idea, it's about the worst set I've ever seen. It's entirely Lethal damage except for the tiny ticking of the Toxic damage DoT. This makes it highly resisted by many things, except for the tiny Toxic damage that hardly does anything. When the Toxic DoT -does- happen, it interrupts your ability to Placate your foe. You also have much less damage than Katana, longer animations, and what appear to be bananas coming out of you. Impale is widely regarded as the thing that makes this set work, but I know better. Impale takes forever to fire, and takes a long time for the thing to even stick the foe if used from range. It's a ranged guaranteed immobilize though, which is fine, and has a -fly effect to it. Ripper is a huge animation, decent chance for knockdown, but doesn't crit often since it's an AoE. I'm not sure if it is capable of critting when used when not Hidden, but I suspect it isn't. This is a set that excels at AoE damage that was put into a Stalker, which is bad since Stalker AoE's don't crit very often. Spines Scrappers are very potent AoE sets that are actually capable of out-doing some Blaster sets in AoE damage. Spines Stalkers are not. I highly dislike the set and it's current reputation as not only 'passable', but 'fotm'.
Claws/Ninjitsu: Suffers from the same limitations as Spines, but not quite so bad. You get a better ranged attack with Focus. This set is also entirely Lethal damage, and doesn't have much damage, but it carries Focus. Worship the Focus. It's Godly. A ranged pretty much guaranteed knockdown with nearly Bone Smasher damage. I've seen Claws Stalkers who are able to solo things that even makes my Katana/Ninjitsu cringe. With Focus, nothing is capable of even being on it's feet unless they have knockdown protection or you happen to miss once. It recharges quick, has decent range, a lightning quick animation but with some travel time. If you want further knockdown, take Shockwave. It's an AoE knockBACK though, so be careful about where you sling it. The devs recently made this set even better by reducing the animation time on Slash, so this set is -the- DamagePerSecond(DPS) set now. Very low endurance cost in this set, and very quick animations (except for Eviscerate).
Dark/Ninjitsu: The -acc of Dark stacks with Ninjitsu's already potent defense. Also grants another self heal. And the most unresisted damage type available to Stalkers. A very versatile set. It's very safe. Touch of Fear stacks with Ninjitsu's defense to grant you immense defense against any single target. Except for Shadow Maul, this set has some of the fastest animations available to Stalkers. And as an added perk, the Dark Assassin's Strike looks -extremely- cool. A very good combo, and one I highly recommend if you do not wish to stab things instead.
MA/Ninjitsu: And then we come to MA. MA. Martial Arts. It's an all right set. I mean, it's not Spines, at least. You get slightly less resisted damage type (Smashing), and some very good damage, but it has fairly long animation times. Not that they're not very good animations, except for the Assassin's Strike, which is very ugly. They're just very long animations. I had an MA/Ninjitsu. It wasn't as survivable as Katana, wasn't quite as damaging, and just didn't -feel- powerful. You do have quite a load of status effect to inflict on your enemies. Magnitude 2 single target immobilize with very good damage, a single target knockback that can be annoying but useful, a single target stun with terrible damage, and a single target stun with massive damage. Dwarflord will probably come in and smack me if I don't say it's 'decent', so I'll say it: MA is decent, just not my thing.
General Tips for PvE and PvP
Now you have mastered your offense, your defense, and chosen from many generic powers to turn you into a killing machine. "Do you have tips and tricks, Angry_Citizen, to use these powersets to become a master of survival and destruction?" I do. Here are a few:
The Pure Defense Mechanism: The main perk of Katana/Ninjitsu is the ability to survive brutal punishments through use of the Divine Avalanche. Just one successful hit more than doubles your defense to melee attacks, and actually increases your defense to a type damage (lethal damage, so even things like bullets will deflect off of you slightly more often than they would with just your toggles running).
Imagine yourself in this situation. You've got your SO's. You are on a killing spree. You spot a boss in the distance. You think to yourself, "Ok. As long as I get into melee range of that deadly mound of flesh, I'll be fine." You are right. You will be just fine. The trick in this situation is to be very careful. Even go out of your way to NOT use Assassin's Strike on the boss as your alpha attack if you think you cannot live through the first 2 seconds of pain. Fire off that Divine Avalanche, and watch your enemy whiff you as you whittle away. You can always use Placate to deliver the AS later.
In PvP, you needn't waste your critical on your enemy. Typically, almost all PvP players will be taken by surprise by the Assassination. While they fumble around and try to hit Aim, or Build Up, or Placate, or Bone Smasher, or Impale, or just about anything else you can think of, you can slap them with Divine Avalanche and smirk while they hit nothing but sailboat fuel. I've stood around and watched multiple scrappers fail to kill me due to simply spamming Divine Avalanche. The cost of this massive defense and nigh unhittability is the fact that while you are spamming this, you can do very little to actually harm your enemy. Most of your time is spent watching your health in case of a lucky hit or two, watching Kuji-In Sha come up in order to reheal what damage did come through, or clicking Divine Avalanche, or watching your enemy for signs of Build Up/Aim usage. However, in a one on one situation, pretty much nothing can kill you. Blasters die in two easy hits. Controllers as well, and you have Kuji-In Rin for anything they could do to you. Defenders generally don't have the damage to do anything to you, but they can make life miserable. Scrappers and Tanks are almost entirely covered by Divine Avalanche's protection, with the exception of Super Strength's two AoE/Ranged attacks and Rage, which negates your toggles but NOT Divine Avalanche. Worst thing a Katana/Ninjitsu can fight is a Fire/SS tank with Tough. They are very powerful against your build, but don't spread the word.
The Surprise Attack: This is very simple in concept, actually, but can be difficult to pull off successfully. It is necessary, as you lack ranged attacks of any kind (as it should be). It requires your travel power skills to be absolutely perfect, and you almost always need to run if you fail this maneuver, or miss your target even by a few feet. Use this tactic if your enemy or your enemy's allies can see you - this is almost always PvP-oriented, but against entities like Knives of Artemis and Rikti, it is quite necessary, as their advanced technology can pierce through your sneaky habits and shadow crawling, leaving you vulnerable and open to getting cut/stabbed/Caltropped/blasted.
So.. you spot your enemy in the distance. You jump/run/fly near him. He turns towards you and hits you! "He sees me! What gives, A_C?!" What gives is, is that your enemy has enough +perception powers to see you. In this situation, you run away and begin the following maneuver.
Turn around after he has lost aggro/gone back to his camping spot. Hit Build Up while you're falling/getting close, and let your inertia carry you into your target. If you're flying, disable Flight while Build Up is activating, and try to land directly onto your target. Having gotten onto your opponent, you must be quick. Button mash Assassin's Strike several times, but be perfectly still after landing. This is critical, as Assassin's Strike is almost always going to be interrupted on the first click due to the server being slower than your mental capabilities. Now, if done right, this will almost always work. You actually have to defeat the human in this situation, and not the character. You defeat them by being faster than they are, and getting in and stabbing them in the back before they realize you're even there. Very quick players, who are aware of your tactics, will sometimes be capable of using an attack to interrupt you, but even so, it is rare. Often enough they'll simply whiff you in that 2 seconds that you're vulnerable, which lets you thrust your blade into them without hindrance.
Timing Kuji-In Sha: This is a very important skill to master as a Ninja. Timing Kuji-In Sha is important because it can spell the difference between debt and securing your kill. The trick in timing Kuji-In Sha, is to monitor your buff bar. "What's a buff bar?" Under your health/endurance/xp menu is at least one rather small icon, normally a row of icons, which show every single thing that is affecting your character. Buffs, toggles, your inherent, and - enemy attacks! Yes, when your enemy starts their attack (assuming the tohit roll is successful, in other words, hits), your buff bar will display a matching icon of that power next to your toggles/buffs/etc. So.. when you see that icon, you instantly think to yourself, "How much damage will this attack do? How long will it take to hit me? Does it carry an effect I am weak to (this normally being knockdown)? Will I be able to live through this attack? Does it do Damage over Time (DoT)? Can it crit? Who shot it?" While these questions are normally instantly answered by experience, you calculate the fact that Kuji-In Sha heals for almost exactly half your total hit points. Using this as a basis for comparison, let's make an example:
Say you have 1,000 hit points. Say you have taken 750 damage, leaving you with 250 hit points. A player has just activated Head Splitter, and you know it's going to come because you see the appropriate Icon. If a player is using Head Splitter, one of the most powerful attack they have, it's probably going to hit for more than 250 points, right? Quickly reach for Kuji-In Sha in this situation. There's a very very tiny delay before the heal actually heals you up, so do try and get used to that. Also try not to use this before you're at 50% health or below, unless you're fighting something with VERY high damage attacks with quick animations. But the INSTANT you hit that 50% marker, you better hit Kuji-In Sha, and get it recharging in case you need it 31 seconds from now. This is -the- most efficient way of using Kuji-In Sha, and one you really need to master.
Kuji-In Retsu: Yes. Your God Mode gets it's own section. Note that there are minute spoilers in this section, at the bottom, so if you care about such things, don't read since I'm just rambling anyway. Retsu is one of those abilities that, if you don't pay proper homage to it, will turn around and bite you in the [censored]. Now, God Mode is not -complete- protection from everything. Enemies generally get a very very low chance to hit you with it (on the order of 5 and 6.25 and other equally ridiculously low accuracy numbers). You will still be vulnerable from getting wiped off Lord Recluse's Green Earth by sheer numbers and complete non-luck. And by your arch-nemesis, the To Hit Buff. More on To Hit Buffs later. Now, proper use of Kuji-In Retsu dictates that you get the heck out of Dodge after 2 minutes, 50 seconds of time. Around this time, your Kuji-In Retsu icon will begin blinking ominously. This is your cue that the Retsu Gods are getting angry. After all, every 512 seconds or so, you sell your endurance bar to the Retsu Gods. They then bless you with Defense and a large supply of said endurance, but at the end of 3 minutes, you better give up your endurance bar, or they will come and beat you down with auto-hit God Powers. Ahem. Getting carried away. During your Defense blessing, there are only a few things that can reliably kill you. These include Blasters with Aim and BU slotted, and Mind and Illusion Controllers who seem to have made a dark pact with the Retsu Gods, giving them access through your defenses. They CAN, and they WILL pin you down. On the PvE side of things, very few things possess massive tohit buffs allowing them to hit you. Some that I can list off the top of my head: Sstheno, Lord Recluse, and I'm pretty sure Statesman has it too. So generally, those who have drunk from the mythical Well of Furies (read the clues in-game) will have tohit buffs that can (and will) turn you into roadkill. Try and avoid these mobs without several lucks and oranges to overcome these buffs.
Team Play
This is to show you general tips involving Team play.
Assassinating in Teams: This is slightly more difficult to do in teams. Why? Because, while there is a tiny fraction of a chance you'll ever get hit by an AoE attack, it WILL happen, because of the tohit floor of 5%. Enemies will always have that 5% chance to hit you. Try to stay away from the person taking the Alpha strike in teams (unless it's you - if you try to stay away from yourself, we'll have to take you away, see). This is normally the Brute of the team, so try to position yourself out of the line of fire.
Etiquette: This is a very important thing to learn in Team play. The following are things you should NOT do as a Stalker in a team: Run off and scout the entire map while your team is fighting, unless specifically asked to. Do not run off and get the glowies unless specifically asked to. Do not run off and trigger ambushes. Do not purposefully Placate a boss on a team of squishies, especially when you're handling that boss just fine. Your massive strike will be worthless if a crucial member of the team dies because you told the boss to lay off for a moment so you could stick him. If you feel like sticking said boss, knock him down first. That way you can regain his aggro while he gets up. Remember, Stalkers are there to take out the strongest possible threat. This also means distracting the strongest possible threat if you can't annihilate the poor chap in one shot.
PvP Teaming: If you ever plan to PvP, you'll probably want to team. If you don't want to team, you'll never see the Ungodly level of defense a Bubbled Ninjitsu Stalker can attain. Do -not- run off and solo, then return once in a while for buffs. -Always- give the squishies your break frees unless you're some odd chap who went Rinless. If there are other Stalkers on your team, make a bind such as: /bind g "team $target" which will easily copy the name of whatever you're targetting into Team chat, and with some foreknowledge of this bind, allow you and your Stalker brethren to murder a target simultaneously. Extremely effective. Try to stick the Defenders or Controllers first. Work towards the Blasters next, and then the melees. If you see a Kheldian, know that Hell hath frozen over, and try to clean up your act so you don't have to spend eternity freezing down there. Or just bring a Winter coat. Ahem. Anyway. Why stick the squishies first, in ascending order of hitpoints? Because Defenders and Controllers are the most dangerous foes. They can and they will debuff you until you can't grow anymore, hold you until you plead for mercy, buff their allies into unstoppable killing machines, and take away your kill RIGHT as you're about to finish the insolent worm off. Blasters are the highest amount of offense possible in the Hero AT's. They're also very simple to take down if they don't swallow twenty pills. Take them out before they take you out. Scrappers are very difficult little buggers, but without supporting AT's, they're toast in the hands of a good team. Tanks can be extremely difficult to take down, but generally can't harm you as much as you might think. Some can be dangerous, like SS or EM tanks, but those also have their counters.
General Notes
Okay. As promised, a quick rundown on certain things.
BI: This stands for Brawl Index. It helps you know how much base damage a power will do based on it's comparison to Brawl, a universal power that everyone has. It helps to know, however, that while the BI of a power may be the same, it can actually do different damage when used by different AT's. For example, if a Scrapper uses Golden Dragonfly, he's going to do a great deal more damage than your Golden Dragonfly will do. This is because of AT damage modifiers. A Stalker's is .90. A Scrapper's is 1.125. For comparison purposes, a Blaster's is set at 1.0. So just because a power has a higher Brawl Index doesn't mean that it does higher damage, though that can indeed be the case. Anyway. To discover the Brawl Index of a power, remove all damage enhancements from a power, and find a non-resistant enemy. Generally, low level enemies have no resistances to anything, and thus are a good test for such a thing. Use Brawl. Note Brawl's exact damage in your combat chat tab. Use the power in question. Note it's exact damage. Get a calculator (more exact testing, since it greatly reduces the possibility of human error), and divide the power's damage by Brawl's damage. The resulting number is your BI.
Toggle Dropping: This is a far less common effect as of I7. It's still common enough to give a short rundown. In PvP, it is entirely possible for a toggle or two to be randomly dropped by certain powers. These powers include some Blaster melee attacks, Brawl, some Defender primary powers such as Force Bolt and Lightning Storm, Kheldian Dwarf strikes, some Dominator melee attacks, and your Assassin's Strike. Now, some are more reliable than others, and some can even drop more than one toggle if they're extremely lucky, but generally, toggle dropping is rare enough that you needn't worry about it nor count on it. Just be happy when it does happen with your AS, and be sad when it happens to you.
Tohit buffs: A Tohit Buff. A nasty, dirty little thing that gives all of us defense sets pain. "Why?" Because for every point of Tohit Buff an enemy has, you lose a single point of Defense in the accuracy calculation. Now, I am by no means an expert about the accuracy code. That is Arcanaville's area of expertise. I do know, however, that this is the accuracy code: Base Tohit + (Tohit Buff figure added - Tohit Debuffs) - (Defense figure - defense debuffs) multiplied by accuracy. So if I have a 20% tohit buff on me, I've just negated 20% defense entirely. And since tohit buffs are almost always higher than defense numbers, there are a lot of times your defense is going to be negated. It is, indeed, a broken game mechanic, but this is not the place for such a debate.
Anyway. That concludes my Katana/Ninjitsu guide. I do hope you found it at least somewhat useful. And if you have any ideas for a section that I missed, let me know and I'll include it in the next version.
Thanks!: Thanks to the Stalker Forum for a great deal of my extrapolations. Thanks to Alexis for information regarding Energy Melee. Thanks to Charter Communications for giving me many windows of opportunity (disconnections) to write this.
). Hopefully you can understand the reason and rational behind that.
